Schlieren and Mie Scattering Imaging System to Evaluate Liquid and Vapor Contours of a Gasoline Spray Impacting on a Heated Wall 2015-24-2473

In internal combustion engines, the direct injection at high pressures produces a strong impact of the fuel on the combustion chamber wall, especially in small-bore sizes used for passenger cars. This effect is relevant for the combustion process resulting in an increase of the pollutant emissions and in a reduction of the engine performances. This paper aims to report the effects of the injection pressure and wall temperature on the macroscopic behavior and atomization of the impinging sprays on the wall.

The gasoline spray-wall interaction was characterized inside an optically accessible quiescent chamber using a novel make ready Z-shaped schlieren-Mie scattering set-up using a high-speed C-Mos camera as imaging system. The arrangement was capable to acquire alternatively the schlieren and Mie-scattering images in a quasi-simultaneous fashion using the same line-of-sight. This methodology allowed complementing the Mie scattering images, adapting to the liquid phase, with the schlieren ones for the determination both of the liquid and vaporing phase during the single cycle. A single-hole axially disposed injector was used, 0.200 mm in diameter L/d=1.0, while the injection pressure and the wall temperature ranged between 5.0 - 20.0 MPa and ambient to 573 K, respectively. Optical investigations were carried out at atmospheric backpressure and ambient gas temperature. The images of the impact, resolved in the cycle, were processed by a customized algorithm able to catch the contours of the liquid phase and the vapor/atomized zone. Spatial and temporal evolutions were measured for both the phases in terms of width penetration and thickness growth.